Politics

Bloomberg New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern swept to a historic election victory and said she will use her mandate to rebuild an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic and tackle social inequality. Ardern’s Labour Party secured the first outright majority in parliament since the introduction of proportional representation in 1996 and, if preliminary results stand, its biggest share of ...

Bloomberg At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 others were injured in a missile attack on Azerbaijan’s second-largest city of Ganca overnight, the authorities in Baku said. A residential building was shelled around 1 am, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office said on its website. Search and rescue efforts continued after 13 bodies were pulled from the rubble ...

Bloomberg Protests against police brutality continued in major cities across Nigeria, with demands evolving beyond ending police excesses to calls for good governance across the board. Vigils were held in major cities overnight, as regional strains emerged, with youth protesters in several northern Nigerian towns demanding urgent steps to end insecurity and an insurgency that has plagued the region for ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s government called on police to intensify their crackdown on protesters following a night of clashes between officers and activists, with demonstrations planned for a fourth straight day. Thousands of anti-government protesters defied emergency rules and a ban on large gatherings as they held a rally at a busy intersection in central Bangkok after Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha rejected ...

Bloomberg India is identifying 300 million people who will receive the initial dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the Times of India newspaper reported on Saturday. Priority will be given to workers in high-risk sectors such as police, healthcare, sanitation, elderly people and those with co-morbidities, the report said, citing officials it didn’t identify. The shots, which will include a booster ...

Bloomberg Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim reported to police and gave a statement on issues including allegations against him and his announcement that the current government had fallen. “The investigations were carried out professionally without any political pressure or orders from any quarters,” Huzir Mohamed, police criminal investigation department director, said. Anwar was summoned just days after he had an ...

Bloomberg Tens of thousands of Thai protesters defied police barricades and pro-establishment groups in Bangkok on Wednesday for the most tense demonstration yet in a student-led push for greater democracy and less power for the monarchy. The protesters pushed through several blockades made of transit buses, fences and barbed wires during their 2-kilometre march to Government House, the office of ...

Bloomberg The European Union is poised to blacklist six people and one entity in Russia over the attempted murder of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. EU member-state envoys in Brussels cleared the way on Wednesday for bloc-wide asset freezes on the Russian officials and the organisation as well as travel bans on the individuals, according to a person familiar with the ...

Bloomberg The largest party in Malaysia’s ruling coalition threatened to pull out unless it gets better terms, adding pressure on PM Muhyiddin Yassin to shore up his unstable government or call a snap election. The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which holds about a third of the seats in Muhyiddin’s 12-party government, said in a statement that it would enter ...

Bloomberg Kyrgyzstan’s parliament confirmed Sadyr Japarov as prime minister for the second time in five days after President Sooronbay Jeenbekov gave in to pressure to appoint the politician freed from prison by protesters last week. Jeenbekov’s move came a day after he’d rejected parliament’s unanimous appointment of Japarov as premier. In an address to the nation published on the presidential ...